


Stubborn Love

by angstbot



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstbot/pseuds/angstbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic based on The Lumineers song of the same name, set in Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stubborn Love

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m supposed to be writing Stress Relief #4, but I can’t get Regina to behave. So I wrote this to try to get the creativity flowing again. Even if songfic is, in the words of my friend, “falling hard.”

_She'll lie and steal and cheat, and beg you from her knees  
Make you think she means it this time_

It is only much later that Emma realizes the fire was when things started to change. Regina had said "You have to get me out! Help me!"--she'd looked up at her, genuinely vulnerable and as beautiful as she was terrified--and something shifted in the blonde’s chest. The mayor would go on to be manipulative and lying and awful for a long time after that, but from then on Emma always had a little flicker of compassion.

That moment, she comes to see, was when the heart she’d been so good at freezing after Neal started to thaw.

_She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair  
But I still love her; I don't really care_

“I think we need to talk to our son,” Emma says, and as their eyes meet she knows she and Regina understand each other perfectly.

The sheriff knows that she should be horrified by ripping the heart out of a child, like Snow is, but she respects this ruthlessness. If she is to be honest, which she’s been getting better at for Henry’s sake, it’s more than respect.

Regina just feels right in her life. Regina feels right in her heart. And, as they huddle around the magicked mirror, Regina feels right as warmth against her body.

_It's better to feel pain than nothing at all  
The opposite of love's indifference_

Their kisses are bruising. They use too much teeth on each others’ necks, shoulders, breasts. They use too many fingers and fuck too hard. But if the pleasure of it lets them forget the situation for a minute, the pain reminds them they’re still alive, still fighting, that if nothing else they still have each other.

For whatever that’s worth.  
  
 _And I don't blame you dear for running like you did all these years  
I would do the same, you'd best believe_

Emma knows that Regina has always been at her most vicious when left without an escape route. She killed the king to be free of him; she cursed the kingdom when she found herself boxed in by Rumplestiltskin’s machinations; she teamed up with Cora when it turned out that goodness got her exactly nowhere.

It’s something Emma understands. Having to face up and be something you don’t want is hard on the soul. This savior stuff, people depending on her, is plenty enough to send her screaming back to Boston. She has been staying for Henry.

And maybe, finding a kindred spirit is another little root put down in this life.

_When we were young oh, oh, we did enough_

At eighteen, Regina had turned to magic out of grief and desperation, and discovered she liked it too much to stop.

At eighteen, Emma had gone on a crime spree that started with grand theft auto and ended with eleven months in Arizona.

It all came down to twists of fate, the little decisions that led to other, bigger, worse ones. The accident and chance of it all, the way it didn’t have to go bad but it did, used to make her angry.

Now she knows that without it they would never have had Henry. Or each other.

_I can't be told, ah, ah, it can't be done_

It’s a warped parody of a happy family, Emma thinks as they slide back into Storybrooke harbor. Two parents who love Henry unreservedly, sure, but who vacillate between viciousness and détente and grasping, needy sex with each other. Emma knows, really knows in her bones, that it’s a bad idea.

But bad ideas have never really stopped her.

_Keep your head up, my love_

It’s a mark of who they’ve become to each other that this time Emma doesn’t let the reunion leave Regina out. Not like on her return from the Enchanted Forest, when she’d damn well seen the devastation in those bright brown eyes and the hang of her head as they all streamed out of Gold’s shop but let it happen.

She’ll hurt Regina again. She’ll hurt her on purpose again, even. But here and now, she’s going to make sure they act like the twisted little family that they are.


End file.
